(Dobbs) Profiles in Courage? Look Somewhere Else
At least Democratic leaders told Cuomo he had to go. From Republicans in the Age of Trump, not so much.
This might not be totally fair, but if you’re among those American who still believe in actual facts, the following facts speak for themselves: in the age of the Me Too movement, if Democratic politicians have pretty obviously misbehaved, morally or criminally or both, it hasn’t just been Republican rivals who have called for their resignations. It has been their fellow Democrats. Not just because of the politicians’ misbehavior itself, but because of the turmoil it brings to their party and to the people they govern.
New York’s governor Andrew Cuomo, accused by at least 11 women of sexual harassment including fondling a woman’s breasts, is the latest example, but hardly the first.
By contrast, look at the one politician from New York more famous than Cuomo. You know who I mean, the “former guy” who years ago didn’t realize he was being recorded (or, who knows, maybe he did) when he infamously bragged, “When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.” This, after boasting that he’d pretty much done all of that and more.
At least 26 women have publicly and credibly accused him of sexual misconduct, including outright rape. But in the Age of Trump, few Republicans said his conduct was despicable. Fewer turned against him for good.
In Cuomo’s case, as plausible-sounding accusations against him grew, his Democratic colleagues turned on him like a hunk of rotten fish. Like New York State’s attorney general, who initiated the incriminating report about the governor. Like the party chairman for the state of New York. Like longtime Cuomo allies who lead labor unions in New York. Like New York’s Speaker of the Assembly and the Majority Leader of the State Senate, who implored him to resign. Like both United States senators from New York. Like the Speaker of the House in Washington. Even the most important Democrat on earth and a longtime crony of Cuomo’s, Joe Biden, said last week when the damning report came out, “I think he should resign.”
It says a lot that the sole national figure who has defended Governor Cuomo is Rudy Giuliani. Republican Rudy Giuliani, of Donald Trump fame. It figures.
Contrast all of that with Trump… or, by the way, with the likes of Supreme Court justices Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh, both of whom were credibly accused of sexual harassment or misconduct or both. Like Cuomo, none has been convicted of sexual crimes. But unlike Cuomo, none even hinted at withdrawing from the public eye and saving the nation from trauma. To the contrary, they dug in deeper.
More important, unlike Democrats who condemned Cuomo, almost all Republican leaders in each case dug in deeper too, putting their wagons in a circle, ignoring incriminating evidence, and standing by their party and their peers.
It was as if they were telling us, “Go home, nothing to see here.”
But there was plenty to see. I have my doubts about Cuomo’s honesty now but none of us knows for sure whether his excuses in his resignation speech Tuesday were honest or hollow when he told us, “In my mind, I have never crossed the line with anyone, but I didn't realize the extent to which the line has been redrawn.” It’s equally true, none of us knows for sure about Clarence Thomas or Brett Kavanaugh or Donald Trump either. We just weren’t there. Yet in the cases of any of these men, as with Cuomo, there’s merit to the mantra, “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.”
To be fair, when Bill Clinton was impeached— for lying about consensual sex with Monica Lewinsky— there was plenty of smoke, but only a handful of daring Democrats abandoned him. To be equally fair, there has been a handful of Republicans today who have bucked their party over Trump— in his second impeachment trial, seven senators from the GOP even voted to convict. But what that means is, 43 did not. And those seven, for their courage and their creed, have been roundly rebuked by fellow Republicans. To say nothing of Liz Cheney’s expulsion from party leadership in the House.
If you’re old enough, you remember Watergate and Richard Nixon’s resignation. Democrats had been demanding it for a long time. But it was left to three leading Republicans— Senator and former presidential candidate Barry Goldwater, Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott, and House Minority Leader John Rhodes— to go to the White House and tell Nixon that his time was up. The next night, he resigned.
Where are those kinds of Republicans in today’s Age of Trump?
As a citizen and certainly as a journalist, I’ve always believed in the standard of innocent until proven guilty. But that’s a legal standard. Cuomo’s case supersedes it. He still might be hauled into a court of law to answer his accusers’ claims and they will have to prove his guilt, but even before that might happen, resignation was the only honorable course. The very fact that a nationally recognized leader was under a cloud of suspicion, leaving his constituents without an authority they could trust, justified the demands from other leading Democrats for him to go.
We haven’t seen much in the way of profiles in courage on the Republican side. Even as Trump soiled the flag, his henchmen rallied around it. Most still do. Look at what it has gotten us.
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For almost five decades Greg Dobbs has been a correspondent for two television networks, a political columnist for The Denver Post, a moderator on Rocky Mountain PBS, and author of two books, including “Life in the Wrong Lane.” He has covered presidencies and politics at home and international crises around the globe. He won three Emmys, and the Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists.